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 Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 12:20 am
Despite the defeat of the massive hostile, there was still an imminent threat to be addressed.
It had begun during their party, escalating in the midst of the Titan's attack, and remained a competition that showed no signs of stopping. As amicably as they could, they had decided upon the necessity of a temporary truce; they needed rules and guidelines and boundaries, or needed to agree that there were none. Mimsy was confident in her tactical abilities either way, but had no intentions of being unfair.
The Argus lab was still, unfortunately, as dark as the other non-essential portions of the buildings, but it unquestionably served as the most neutral common ground. The most logical of meeting places, offering privacy and remnants of partnership that would (hopefully) remind them of the more important paths that they once planned on taking.
She waited inside, seated on a tall lab stool she'd located with the glow of her fingertips, and considered the long list of items that the two of them needed to discuss. After Song made her intentions very clear, she strayed from telling Lucky these sorts of things, but it was now unavoidable.
Now it was life or death, in a chillingly literal sense. The game was on.
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Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 1:16 am
Lucky's outline was a clear neon blue in the absence of true light, and it had permeated everything - including his hair, his glasses, and his coat. The life division tree was now a strangely warped blue-on-black as it billowed behind him. His arrival was impossible to miss.
The Argus lab was familiar, if dismal in the state it had fallen into since the power had gone out. Lucky could have navigated it blind, by now. But he refrained.
Like her, he had come empty-handed.
Like her, he just wanted a system.
But he wasn't alone, even if he looked it. He shared his sight, his thoughts, with another entity. Song's presence was as much a background noise now as the silence that had been there before her. He could feel the subtle snarls of thought and feeling scattered in a circle around his consciousness, the smallest ripples in a still pond. What had once been an alien presence had now become a comfort. To know he was not alone in this was all he had, really. The wendigo had spent hours weaving possibility and warning him repeatedly that Mimsy could not be trusted.
He disagreed; if she had wanted to get away with anything, she didn't need this pretense to do so. He would take his chances... again.
Lucky took a seat across from her directly on a nearby countertop and rested his hands on his dangling knees. His eyes flashed the same eerie blue as the rest of him as they settled on the general location Mimsy's glow emanated from.
"Hello, Mimsy," he greeted her airily. As if they were just two old friends catching up with each other.
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Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 2:28 am
Leave it to Lucky to look more badass than she did after he'd been eaten by a Titan. It figured. Something out there was tipping the scales in his favor, and Mimsy didn't like it, even for things as petty as a stubbornly persistent glow. She glanced at her fingers and wrinkled her nose, thoughts wandering to the potential difficulties of bioengineering something more permanent. Maybe the collected samples would shed some light. Or some glow, more specifically.
"Hello," she replied, the courteous nod of her head visible by the motion of the glowing spots across her face. Though she was curious over any ill-effects he might be experienced, she was trying as hard as she could to avoid addressing his superior glow. If she didn't acknowledge it, she didn't have to admit that he'd won at something. "I believe that I promised you a 'talk'. Would you prefer for me to first address any explanations that you feel I owe you, or should we immediately begin to touch upon the boundaries of this competition?"
Her nails drummed against the laminate on the stool-top.
"For the record, I am comfortable beginning with either option." After all, she was fairly certain that she'd figured out the reasoning behind his annoying new habits. Hers were much less apparent, judging by the confusion and eyerolling that he had not shied away from displaying.
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Posted: Sat Sep 28, 2013 6:06 pm
"Hm," he wondered aloud, looking up toward the empty void of the ceiling.
"I think," he spoke slowly, leaning back on both arms and tilting his head curiously to the side, "I prefer to hear explanation before ve do anything else. Is much vorrying, you know? You really vere not yourself yesterday, Mimsy. Never have I seen you so angry before about.... vell, I cannot think of single thing."
"Is funny to say, but, if I did not know you better..." He glanced away for a moment, and a mocking smile crept across his face. He laughed lightly into curled hand before he met her approximate gaze again. By now he was grinning behind the poor cover of his glowing hand. "I vould have thought you had become in love vith Robert."
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Posted: Sun Sep 29, 2013 8:24 pm
As expected. Mimsy knew that she would have asked the same of herself, were she in his position. It made for a nice introduction to the more necessary topics, anyway; they would not be playing this game had their circumstances not shifted. "Oh. Yes. That is an amusing thought. What a clever joke, Lucky." She picked at her nails, a repetitive click, click, click filling the silence left by her pause. "Had you not mentioned how funny it was, I might have questioned your intelligence again. Thankfully, we are both on the same page for this much." The clicking hadn't stopped, but her eyes were on him now, instead of the glowing nailbeds of her right hand. Her stare was lengthy enough to cross the line of uncomfortable, and she reminded herself that the fact that she couldn't entirely read him right now might mean that the darkness was also working in her favor. "Upon our return from Excalibur's requested task, I have noticed a greater ease in falsifying socialization and a slight disruption in..." Click, click. "...emotional responses. No need for concern. It is under control, and I will be working towards an understanding of the events that took place so I can rectify this problem as soon as possible." She sighed, and almost seemed bored with explaining, despite her readiness to do so. "Regarding him specifically, the strongest comparison that I can make is that he is a test subject in ongoing trials, and I can't risk having variables that I have not accounted for." One glowing hand casually gestured towards him, in case he hadn't figured out that he was an unaccounted variable here. "Of course, I had not accounted for your actions because you were not quite yourself either." There was a brief, faint flash when his glow reflected in her glasses, the smudges on her face going slightly askew as she tilted her head.
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Posted: Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:50 pm
There was a slightly too-long pause.
"I do not know vhat you are talking about," he finally deflected, flippant. The less attention he was paid in that incident, the better. Even Mimsy was taking a more honest policy about her changes than he was - but he had chosen this, and she apparent had not. The real irony was that they'd both focused their attention and machinations on the same man, unaware of the other. Until now, anyway. "But I do know that vas not denial. Is like a trial, but is not one, eh? Variables you cannot account for?"
Casually he swept off the counter and crossed the few small steps of space between them. He hesitated; then his glowing fingers wrapped around one of her wrists. Gently he guided her hand to rest over the part of her chest where her heartbeat felt strongest inside it. "Here are your unaccounted variables."
"But next time you must do something for love, please try to leave me out of it," he added flatly, knowing full well neither of them had forgotten how she's nearly launched him at the insanity beast.
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Posted: Sun Sep 29, 2013 11:52 pm
"You don't? Hmm. I must have been mistaken." It didn't sound like Mimsy thought that she made a mistake. He clearly could not return her honesty. She would remember that.
"Was that not in jest? If you need a denial, I can give you one." But she didn't. She didn't say anything at all for a while; at first it was confused silence, curiosity overwhelming her need to speak. Why was he touching her? Why was he putting her hand there? Then it came from something more irritable, teeth clenched as she realized he was possibly correct, followed by a refusal to admit as much.
Her hand dropped to her lap, and she scoffed, feigning indifference.
"I am a scientist. I can account for my own variables. I can measure my own heart rate and am well aware of my own physiological and psychological responses. This is my study - not a study about me. I administer adjustments as necessary, which you may be confusing with affectionate involvement." Eyes narrowed, she considered giving him the benefit of the doubt by skipping the clarification. This was a clarification over something he hadn't correctly understood, however. "It is not."
"So you need not worry. In the future, if you are insistent upon your own involvement in my personal experiments, you only have to ask."
She was kind of counting on him not asking.
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Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2013 1:13 am
"Sure. Vhatever you say, then." Lucky withdrew and leaned back against the laboratory countertop but did not take a seat. He could not pick up on the subtlely of her initial observation - as far as he was aware, she had dropped it. The nausea he had initially wanted to attribute to the idea of Mimsy and Robert being together he could no longer completely pin down as such. This time it didn't seem to have any intention of passing. Neither did the dizzy spell that forced him to stay right where he was for a minute or so.
Yep, this was a whole other kind of visceral reaction.
Seeking distraction, he reached out with one hand in a sort of odd, focused grasping motion. Something small and shiny and metallic materialized into the space between his fingers. He held the ring up, surveying it as if trying to appraise it. Or maybe just to remind her of its existence. "I am not the one who needs to hear the denial. If you are ever in doubt of yourself, though..."
Lucky held the ring out toward her, pinched between two fingers.
"I am happy to help you vith this."
He waited, smiling politely. Of course she wouldn't take it. Not now. The ring soon disappeared into his pocket. For now.
"How intriguing," he mused at the offer. He did not accept outright. He could not recall them ever not agreeing to work together on anything before now. Bitter nostalgia. "Maybe later. Life is full of surprises."
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Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2013 1:55 am
If he didn't need to hear a firm denial, why had he brought it up?
<He means you, wipnit.>
The amount of clarification that Svensyl brought as of late was becoming somewhat alarming. Mimsy wrinkled her nose and watched Lucky make a motion that looked a lot like he was catching a bug that she hadn't seen, but the glint of metal in his palm was quickly indicative that it was something much more troublesome.
She held her breath, hoping that he would not request for her to put the ring on, panicked excuses slowly beginning to form in her mind. There were varying levels of trust, and though this meeting was built on trust in a sense, it was not the kind of trust required to wear that.
Really, she wasn't sure that she trusted herself with it.
Maybe he trusted her more than she did. Maybe he wanted some leverage later. Regardless of the reason, she was thankful for the extra time the delay had allowed her.
"I appreciate the offer. Maybe later. Surprises, et cetera." That was not the kind of surprise that she wanted to face, in spite of how unfeasible it seemed. Not now, not ever.
"I suppose we should move along to a discussion of our competition of sorts. Do you have any terms in mind? Conditions? Limitations? Now is the time to address them, if so."
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Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2013 4:11 pm
"Is a competition, yes," he began tentatively, sounding a little confused, "But vhat exactly are ve to compete at? And for?"
He spread his glowing hands in a sort of futility. "It is hard to say who has von in a game of no rules, you see."
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